Genre of Self-Presentation: Practical Results and Typical Mistakes of Students

Romanova Natalya Gennad'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-1231-4237 PhD in Philology Associate Professor at the Department of Marketing, Advertising and Public Relations, Novosibirsk State University of Economics and Management 630099, Russia, Novosibirskaya oblast', g. Novosibirsk, ul. Kamenskaya, 56, of. 5-310 ngm_2006@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Subject and purpose of the study

The term "self-presentation", following foreign research, appears with a regular frequency on the pages of the domestic scientific press. Being affiliated with representatives of various trends and schools – first of all, the corps of psychological knowledge and sociology, the phenomenon of self-presentation becomes a promising subject of research, of course, for linguists, since, ultimately, we are talking about a work created by a linguistic personality in a particular communicative context, in accordance with the conditions of the latter and the intentions of the speaker. Self-presentation as a popular and in-demand genre in the context of modern business communications has compositional and stylistic features, strict requirements for compliance with regulations and clarity of pragmatic attitude, at the same time leaving room for the manifestation of the speaker's speech creativity. The structure and content of the text of any business self-presentation is subordinated to the task of demonstrating their best professional and personal qualities that can cause a positive response from the interlocutor (or the intended addressee), that is, the transition to the stage of an active dialogue of interested parties. The success of solving this problem by a linguistic personality is determined by both the general high communicative competence of the speaker, and awareness of the specific genre code of self-presentation, the presence of relevant experience in creating such texts.

Thus, the relevance of our work is due to the need to form and evaluate effective methods of teaching the genre of self-presentation as an important component of students' communicative competence in the field of business communication.

The object of consideration is self–presentation as a genre of business communication.

The subject of the study is verbal and nonverbal characteristics of self–presentations and the implementation of pragmatic attitudes of speakers in them.

The purpose of the work is to investigate the practical results of students mastering the genre of self–presentation.

The study of the mechanisms of self-presentation in psychology has a half-century history. Typical for the psychological approach can be considered the definition of J. Tedeshi and M. Riesa: self–presentation is "a deliberate and conscious behavior aimed at creating a certain impression among others" ^{[1, p. 27]}. Transferring the understanding of the problem into the context of impression management, foreign and domestic supporters of the approach, their numerous followers interpret self-presentation as a means of organizing interaction with other people to achieve their goals. These conceptual frameworks can be traced, for example, in the work of T. I. Kulikova ^[2], where the subject of research is the psychological characteristics of senior schoolchildren that influence the choice of self-presentation strategy; in the article by O. A. Pikuleva ^[3], based on a sociological study identifying social and psychological factors that determine the strategies of self-presentation of students; in the dissertation research E. Y. Krylova, devoted to the formation of tactics of self-presentation among students in a virtual environment (see: Krylov E. Y. Formation of tactics of purposeful self-presentation among students in a virtual environment : abstract. dis. ... cand. psikhol. nauk. SPb.: A. I. Herzen State Pedagogical University, 2012. 22 p.).

The linguistic approach does not negate the importance of studying the mechanisms of impression management in interpersonal interaction. In the research of philologists, self-presentation is defined, rather, as a kind of functional orientation of the text and a genre of speech communication, which is currently widespread in the media space and the space of business communications. A significant number of scientific articles have been devoted to the study of linguistic means and structural features of the genre of self-presentation on the Internet in recent years. Thus, A. I. Dubskikh ^{[4, 5]} offers a description of humorous techniques for creating negative self-presentation in the context of current trends in Internet culture and in the context of trends in the media space.  Self-presentation in the works of the author and his colleagues-co-authors O. V. Kisel, A.V. Butova is interpreted as "self-identification of the user of the Internet space in order to present his "I" taking into account personal qualities, as well as taking into account the conditions of Internet communication" ^{[6, p. 223]}.

The topic of creating and maintaining a negative or positive image in the process of Internet communications continues in many works, including the publications of E. A. Nepomnyashchikh ^[7], E. G. Zheludkova ^[8], Yu. A. Books ^[9], G. V. Kukueva ^[10]. The focus is on important extralinguistic factors, lexical and syntactic techniques for creating evaluativeness, which acts as a defining way of personification of personality in the virtual space. It is impossible not to agree with E. A. Nepomnyashchikh, who defines "evaluativeness as a basic principle when creating a self-presentation text" ^{[7, p. 55]}.

Self-presentations on dating sites are particularly popular among domestic and foreign researchers of virtual communication platforms as a material for linguistic analysis ^{[7, 8, 11-13]}. The picture of the language tools and techniques used by the authors of self-presentations is necessarily supplemented by a review of sets of tactics and communicative moves, an assessment of the communicative strategy of the writer.

The works of N. V. Kulagina ^[14], S. K. Karaseva and S. A. Khazova ^[15], E. V. Zinchenko and A. A. Ivakhnenko ^[16], A.M. Chashchina ^[17] are devoted to self-presentations in the aspect of business communications that interests us. Thus, the article by N. V. Kulagina ^[14] describes the features of self-presentation behavior of managers (men and women) in the field of business relations. The author focuses on the role of the gender factor in impression management, self-monitoring and the choice of self-presentation tactics. Indicative and relevant, in our opinion, is the study of self-presentation in political discourse as a communicative strategy of political interview, undertaken in the article by A.M. Chashchina ^[17]. The result of the work were descriptions of various tactics of influencing the electorate and specific speech means of their implementation.

Another corpus of linguistic articles on the problems of self-presentation is devoted to the issues of teaching methods for creating this type of texts ^[18-21]. The essence of the process of teaching self–presentation, according to N. A. Belova and Yu. F. Kamkina, "consists in using certain methods and forms of work to form students' ability to present themselves in a variety of communication situations - official or unofficial, including taking into account the peculiarities of intercultural dialogue" ^{[18, p. 119]}. Possible models and programs for teaching self-presentation of undergraduate students are proposed in the article by I. I. Mishina ^[20]. In addition, I. I. Mishina assessed the conditions and necessary requirements for the implementation of this initiative.

The review of modern scientific publications presented by us testifies to the multidimensional nature of the phenomenon of self-presentation, which makes it a sought-after personal skill in the context of business communications, where it is necessary to form an image of "I" and maintain self-esteem, self-expression, presentation of one's personal qualities in the process of building trusting business relationships, the implementation of speech influence on others, on significant reputational audiences for formation of the desired impression. Following the assertion of the importance of self-presentation competence, the question naturally arises about the ways of its formation and educational practices.

Methods and materials

In the course of the research, general scientific methods of observation, comparison, description, comparative analysis of linguistic material and the linguistic method of interpretive analysis were used.

The material for the study of lexico-stylistic and pragmatic features of business and professional self-presentations were videos (video visuals) prepared by first-year students as part of the study of the subject "Business Communications".

To assess the practical results of mastering the genre of self–presentation, two control groups of students (the total official roster – 42 people, attended classes in both groups - 29 people) were given homework in the following wording: to prepare a self-presentation in the format of a video clip to solve a potentially urgent task (employment, elections to the Board of students of the faculty, obtaining a place in team, etc. options – personal choice, taking into account current life plans), regulations – 1-2 min. Students were given two weeks to prepare, which corresponds to the frequency of seminars in groups. Previously, during the practical lesson, students got an idea of the types and purposes of self-presentations, the basic principles of constructing these speech works, verbal and nonverbal characteristics of their stages (the stage of the first impression and the stage of a short story about themselves). After getting acquainted with the video examples of the genre, a step-by-step plan for the development of professional self-presentation was compiled in each group by joint efforts. During the lesson, students also learned about current trends in business communications (working on a personal brand in social networks, focusing on the Elevator pitch rule, preparing a video suit), popular recommendations and a system of prohibitions when making self-presentations. After 2-3 improvised self-presentations in each group, the difficulties encountered and the mistakes made by the students were reflected and analyzed. In conclusion, as a summary of the lesson, rules were generated, or rather, a "roadmap" for self–preparation of self-presentation in video format.

The total number of works submitted by the specified deadline, which served as the material for this article, is 23. Students' speech works in the genre of self–presentation in the format of videos made it possible to more carefully consider the verbal and non-verbal (including those related to technical parameters) levels of implementation of the communicative plan. For the completeness of the analysis of the linguistic and compositional features of student texts, we have prepared transcripts of monologues based on videos.

Description of the results

To solve the research tasks , the most important parameters of the examination of the speech works of first- year students were:

- the presence of the object of self–presentation - the target audience (the potential addressee of the video card);

- clarity of the target setting: to declare yourself in the context of the business communications being built and to elicit a positive response from the addressee;

- tactical and strategic planning of self-presentation, expediency and effectiveness of the techniques used;

- combination of factual information with evaluative information;

- a system of evaluation tools (lexical, grammatical and stylistic techniques) that contribute to the creation of a student's business image;

- intra-textual language regulatory means - lexical and syntactic techniques, separate partial categories that serve to express the intentions of the subject,

- the degree of meaningfulness of the use of linguistic and non-linguistic means, as well as elements of the background, the appearance of the speaker, the composition of the frame, etc. (compliance with the developed "road map" of the video frame);

- the presence and relevance of speech creativity.

On the first point, we note that in the bulk of the works, the employer acted as the intended target audience of the message, in the 3-video case, the addressee was obviously representatives of the university administration, and in one case, the addressing was unclear. Thus, the priority targets are getting a job (19 texts), becoming a member of a university sports team (2 texts), social activities at the university – becoming a mentor to a group of first–year students (1 text), self-presentation without a clear target setting (1 text).